


stranger

by ozonecologne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: "interesting relationship", Gen, Other, Pre-Season/Series 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 17:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7582681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozonecologne/pseuds/ozonecologne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five times that mary spoke to castiel. pre-season 12.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stranger

I.

Granted, getting propelled through time and space did not leave Mary Winchester at her sharpest. 

Her oldest son, older now than even her, sat opposite at an ordinary side-of-the-highway diner. His brow furrowed and weary lines pulled at the corners of his eyes as he agitatedly brushed some shimmering dust from the sleeves of his heavy jacket.

Broad shoulders, serious mouth. She'd watched him beat a human-looking something with the butt of a rifle earlier in the day. This was not a world she knew and everything scared her.

And still, he paused to look up and smile at her. Ask in nearly a whisper how she took her coffee.

The angel walked into the diner just after their waitress had turned away. He slid smoothly into the seat next to Dean and scrutinized his face for a moment before asking, “What happened to you?”

Dean shrugged. “Got blasted with this stuff when I opened the glove compartment of that guy’s car. Why, is it bad?”

Castiel tilted up his chin and narrowed his eyes. “It’s residue of protective magic. You’ll be fine,” he assured him.

Dean nodded and braced his elbows on the table top. His expression cleared immediately, though some of those lines still lingered on his face. “Awesome. Thanks.”

Castiel reached out and clapped Dean on the shoulder. To the untrained eye, it could have been mistaken for an easy, companionable gesture. But Mary saw the criss-crossed cuts on Dean’s knuckles, the bruising at his temple, the small slice barely hidden underneath his collar, vanish into nothing in a heartbeat.

Dean smiled gratefully, but said nothing of it. Castiel turned his cold eyes on hers.

“Mary?” he asked, offering his hand across the table.

She shook her head and leaned back further into the booth. She could only take so much in one very long day. 

“No thank you,” she said firmly.

Castiel swallowed, and withdrew his hand without another word.

Dean chattered on happily, unperturbed by the ambush they’d fled from, recounting their adventures over the years around bites of his hamburger. He was like this as a child, too, Mary happily noted - bursting with energy and amicable conversation at the worst of times. Sometimes he turned to consult the angel on a detail he might have forgotten, but for the most part Castiel just quietly picked french fries off of Dean’s plate.

Her eyes kept flicking over to him without realizing it, wary, threatened, unsure. Turning off her instincts proved harder than anticipated. She didn’t know how Dean could stand the prickling static in the air, the faint vibrations of power rolling off from where Castiel sat. The hair on the back of her neck stood straight up, always on edge. Dean had assured her when they all met up that he could be trusted, that he was harmless, but in her admittedly limited experience this is not what _harmless_ felt like.

“You alright, Mom?”

Mary jerked her head back to her son. She had been caught up staring at Castiel’s hands, folded together on the table.

She placated him with a smile. “I’m just a little… out of sorts, still,” she lied. “I’m listening, I promise.”

Dean laughed and picked right up where he left off, some nauseating thing about a wendigo in Colorado that truthfully Mary didn’t care to hear.

She noticed Castiel watching her. Her eyes darted guiltily away.

 

II.

The next time they ran from somebody looking to nab Dean, Mary twisted her ankle in a ditch. She could still limp on it, but the joint swelled painfully in the foot well of the Impala and she had kind of forgotten what pain felt like in the 30+ years that she’d been incorporeal. 

She didn’t tell Dean about it. He didn’t need another problem to fix with everything else going on at the moment.

Castiel snuck up on her while Dean was in the shower that night. She flinched back as he stretched out his hand to her, but then she realized that there was something curled into his palm.

“For your ankle,” he murmured, with kind eyes of liquid sky.

Mary hesitantly took the travel-sized bottle of Ibuprofen from the angel’s hand.

“Thank you,” she said, and popped two pills.

Castiel nodded and sat on the other end of the room, far away from where he would be able reach her.

 

III. 

“Oh, _man!_ You missed Star Wars, Mom! Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump! Fucking _Braveheart_!” Dean lamented.

May frowned. “Language,” she admonished, out of habit. She constantly policed John when they'd had children to watch his mouth around young ears. She had a sinking feeling that he hadn’t followed her advice later in life.

Dean sighed. “It’s ok. Cas hasn’t seen them either.”

Castiel sneered. “I know more about pop culture than either of you could even imagine. Besides,” he sniffed. “I have too seen Braveheart.”

“When the _fuck_ did you see Braveheart?”

“Dean!”

Dean held up an apologetic hand in his mother’s direction. Castiel rolled his eyes. “It was on TV. I watch a lot of movies while you sleep,” he stated.

With a snort, Dean clicked on his turn signal and turned the car onto a dirt road. “Well it’s better than watching me, anyway.”

Mary snapped her head up and managed to meet Castiel’s eyes in the rear view mirror. _You watch him sleep?_ she thought, puzzled.

As if he could hear her, Castiel’s cheeks colored, and he cleared his throat as he averted his eyes.

Not the sharpest she’s ever been. But… something. A niggling idea, a hint of a thought really, started to take root in Mary’s mind just then.

“Not like we can do anything about that here, though,” Dean mused. “No reception at these safe houses.”

Mary smiled. “We’ll have to put off my movie education until we get Sam back,” she said.

Dean was quiet for a beat. “Yeah,” he said, sounding oddly choked up. “That’ll… that’ll be nice. The four of us.”

Castiel turned to look at him, but Dean didn’t meet the look. Mary watched them both very closely as that “four of us” echoed in her.

Castiel clicked on the Impala’s radio, but nothing filled the cabin but static.

Still, Castiel relaxed into the seat like he could hear something in the waves.

 

IV.

Mary had never liked this car. But a large part of her hated seeing Castiel, a stranger, sitting behind the wheel regardless.

Not that she had a choice in the matter at present.

Someone had taken her son - both of her sons lost now to these violent people - and Castiel was the one with a plan.

“He’ll be alright,” he promised her. “He’s strong. And I don’t think they’re aiming to kill them, at least not yet.”

Mary grit her teeth. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she hissed at him. “That, oh,  _at least_ they won’t kill him?”

Castiel sighed and opened his mouth, but Mary spoke over him. “Worse things can happen,” she told him.

Castiel closed his mouth suddenly. Paused. “You still feel responsible for not protecting them,” he marveled.

Mary hissed, “Of course I do! It’s Azazel all over again, not that it’s any of your business. Stop reading my mind.”

She turned to add something else scathing, and for the first time she noticed that Castiel’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

Her temper cooled a little at the sight. New things to see in the dark: the way that Castiel’s jaw locked and strained under his skin, the dark circles under his tired eyes.

Mary almost felt sorry for him. “You’re worried about him too, aren’t you?”

Castiel inhaled slowly. The very air shook as he sucked it into himself. “I’m always worried about him.”

Mary deflated after that. Fighting with Castiel accomplished nothing. Taking her frustration and her fear out on him set them both back. This moment did not belong to them; they were more deadly combined than separate.

They rode mostly in silence, Mary with an “iPad” on her lap that could tell them where Dean’s cellphone signal came from. But eventually, they pulled up alongside an old warehouse.

Castiel lingered for a while after turning the key. The car clicked as it cooled down. Mary would not move until he did.

Castiel didn’t turn to look at her, but he did say something. “If you take anything away from tonight, let it be how much I care for your son.”

Mary only watched him. Steady, unafraid all of a sudden. “I already know.”

With that, they climbed out of the car.

 

V.

The safe house door shuddered under the weight of Dean’s foot, clumsily kicked open in his stumbling rush under the weight of the body in his arms. “Bring him towards the couch,” he snapped. Mary did as she was told and swung Castiel’s feet in that direction.

Blood still dripped sluggishly into Dean’s eye from a cut along his hairline. He didn’t seem to even notice it.

“Get some water,” he told Mary. “And the kit in the trunk. I gotta see if I can stop this bleeding,” he said, already ripping off his own overshirt to press against Castiel’s abdomen. The angel was completely unresponsive under his touch.

Despite herself, Mary’s hands shook as she pulled the first aid kit out from among the guns in the Impala.

He’d offered himself up as the distraction. She didn’t think to question it. She didn’t know that angels could bleed or gasp or die. She didn’t think that he would even care enough to -

When she came inside again, Dean was doing chest compressions and growling out fiercely, “Come on, you son of a bitch, don’t do this to me, come on, come on!”

Mary took over for her son so he could stitch up the wound in Castiel’s side. She felt his bones crack under her hands. Her eyes prickled and stung.

“Hang in there, buddy. I gotcha, Cas,” Dean babbled.

It was a very long five hours.

By the time dawn peered in through the rickety windows of their safe house, Dean had passed out in an armchair with blood on his hands, and Castiel opened his eyes again.

He sat up, slowly, propped himself up on his elbows, and winced when Dean’s messy stitches pulled awkwardly at his edges.

Mary sat on the floor by his head all night. Their eyes met as Castiel looked around. He blinked, and put a hand on his chest.

Mary held out her half-empty bottle of Ibuprofen. “You might need this,” she told him.

Despite the pain he undoubtedly felt, Castiel managed to smile a little. “Thank you,” he murmured.

She let their fingers brush together as he took the bottle from her.

 

+I.

She didn’t think, she just moved.

As she was coming out of the gas station bathroom and making her way across the lot, she saw a woman aiming a gun - at Dean or Castiel’s back, she couldn’t be sure. Her eyes snagged on the glint from the barrel; she was getting sharper. Instinct took over.

She grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face down onto the hood of her car. The noise drew both Dean and Castiel’s gazes, lingering idle by the gas pump.

The stunned woman, bleeding now, looked up at Mary from the flat of her back while Mary kicked her gun away into a storm drain. She was panting, her heart was pounding.

“Don’t you _dare_ touch my boys.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on [tumblr.](http://www.ozonecologne.tumblr.com)


End file.
